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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like sitting at the feet of an imaginary favourite uncle..., 25 Jan 2006
Alan Bennett is a man of great humanity, who writes openly about closed lives in a way that feels very special. My gran used to shop at Bennett's father's shop, and I live across the river from Armley, where he grew up, so this episodic personal history has extra layers to it.Yet there are plenty of layers for even the most casual reader - this could easily be what I would call 'a bog book', although some parts would require quite severe constipation for successful completion in one go. There are snippets, remembrances, essays, criticism... This is basically a collection of all the best bits of Bennett's non-fiction writing. There is barely a hair's breadth between much of this writing and that of something like 'Talking Heads', which carries the same level of affectionate honesty. Bennett seems to be such a dispassionate person, as if observing the world through glass, yet when one chooses to see the world from his happy-sad perspective, one is often moved to tears. I'm not sure I can explain it: sometimes it's like Mr Spock from Star Trek, mystified at humans in general, and human emotion in particular. Bennett is not a religious man (although he had a religious upbringing), yet this book instills in me a sense of wonder at the ordinary things in life, and a hope that I, too, might see below the surface, even as I am staring at it, seeing nothing else.
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